Successful Language Learners Make Learning “Essential”

If you visit a gym where top level athletes, who are not earning their living through their physical abilities, are working out you may wonder how they are able to have such incredible dedication to something that is not needed for their survival. These non-professional athletes may be bankers, doctors, teachers, nurses, etc. but they workout as if their survival depends on their fitness. What these gym members have figured out is that for their body to respond to the workout they need to have a great workout plan and have the dedication to follow the plan rigorously. The human body is known to respond and grow if the growth is needed for its survival.

You can also find in a gym people who are sitting at a workout machine scrolling through their phones or chatting with friends. These people may spend the same amount of time as the group described above but their body looks as if the exercise has made little or no impact on their physical fitness.

Our body responds to a physical workout when the workout stresses our muscles, heart and lungs. Within limits this stress allows our body to respond and reach a higher level of fitness. So even though most physically fit gym members don’t depend on their fitness to make a living, they exercise as if their survival depended on their being fit.

Language learners can learn from how physically fit people are able to create an “artificial stress” state where the body responds as if it needs a fit physique for its survival. One often encounters people who have been taking language lessons for months and even years but have made very little progress in terms of fluency in speech and understanding. On the other hand there are those who, just after a few months, are conversing with native speakers comfortably. While some of this may have to do with natural talent for learning, most of this is due to the intensity with which they devote themselves to learning the new language.

We also see that immigrants to a country, where they have to learn a new language for economic reasons, are able to start conversing within weeks or months. 

So a very important technique to make progress in language learning is to “convince” yourself that your survival depends on being able to reach a high level of fluency in the new language. This places your brain in a state where it accepts the challenge of the stress needed to learn the language. The brain memory then regards the new language as an essential need and therefore “allocates with priority” the needed resources.  

Author: Dr. Jasprit Singh, President Gurmentor, Inc.

A Learning Company https://gurmentor.com

Professor Emeritus, Electrical Engg. & Comp. Sci. and Applied Physics

University of Michigan, Ann Arbor